This is personal: I have kids and I want grandkids and they should be able to breath and travel and love the world they live it. In order to clean up some of the mess that we’ve made to date, everything on the planet should be made from renewable resources using environmentally benign methods. Everything should be safe and replaceable without destroying the planet. So I am thrilled to be writing about Palm Done Right™.
WHAT IS PALM DONE RIGHT™?
The simplest description is that Palm Done Right™ (PDR) is a model for growing and producing palm products that is not destructive.
Currently, PDR includes 130 farmers (and growing) in Ecuador plus more farmers in Sierra Leone who own their own farms and work in cooperation with Natural Habitats. Natural Habitats provides programs to improve farming methods and tools, community programs, crop collection and processing and then markets and sells the oil and oil products worldwide for these farmers. In 40 years of looking at farms, this is the only truly sustainable project I’ve ever seen with multiple growers for this type of crop.
Natural Habitats has created the Palm Done Right to help you to learn more about what they are doing. This site is also a partnering tool that will allow you to link your customers to this valuable information and to support the PDR program individually.
As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. I pasted below some of the pictures from my trip and short commentary. Also, go to the Palm Done Right and read a more complete story.
Join us in partnership with Natural Habitats and Palm Done Right™ and show the world how to grow and use this amazing ingredient the right way.
This is the first of 3 palm farms we visited – the growth on the tree trunks are epiphytes that live on the trunks and don’t seem to effect the tree’s fruit production. It was 93 degrees F and humid – like sweat through your clothes in 5 minutes humid/hot. These trees are about 20 years old and have about 5 more years before they are replaced because they get too tall to harvest. A 40 lb. bunch falling 25 ft. to the ground makes a real impact! 2nd farm – day 2. The trees behind this guy and his burro are about 3 years old. This is when they begin to bare fruit. The fruit contains both oil and a kernel that produces more oil. This guy will cut the ripe bunches of fruit out of the tree and these weigh about 40 lbs each. They load them into these containers on the burro or mule and bring them to the roads that wind through these hilly farms to a collection slab on the road. Trucks collect the bunches and take them to another central collection point in the town. then in a larger truck to the oil mill. Don’t these look like dinosaur toes? This is a young tree with newly growing fruit bunches coming out from the leaf base. These trees grow to about 25 feet high and the fruit always grows out like this – so as they get taller it is more a challenge to cut the bunches. This is the oil mill – where they produce crude oil. You are looking at the collection slab and beyond at one end of the plant. The palm fruit bunches are loaded into these little rail cars and moved into the steam chamber. The steam loosens the fruit from the bunch. The left over plant material is burned to produce energy, the steamed bunches go into a rotating cylinder where the fruit falls out of the bunch. These pictures are from the most beautiful farm we saw – owned by an engineer and his wife – the Andrades. They have a gorgeous bamboo home with this beautiful bamboo deck where we met the owner. Various buildings on the property. Nice digs for an Alpaca!Can’t resist a picture of this gorgeous collection of local fruit.
